There are many Internet sites featuring photographs (or short biographies) of Polaire, giving her the name of Pauline Polaire.

Also, in her book on Polaire published in 2009, Françoise Giraudet devotes two pages to Polaire au cinéma (Polaire and the cinema) and reproduces the postcard we show on the right along with this comment: "Polaire under her film actress name: Pauline Polaire".

However, this name does not appear in any of the countless articles and features on Polaire that were published during her lifetime, nor on any of the countless postcards representating her that have been edited. And it does not appear once in her autobiography, published in 1933.

But there was indeed a Pauline Polaire, as evidenced by this postcard. An actress, probably Italian, very little about her is known, except that she was born in 1905, and that her most famous film is Maciste all'inferno (1926), directed by Guido Brignone, in which she starred alongside Bartolomeo Pagano.

This postcard was released to mark the debut of this film. With regards to the physical appearance, confusion with Polaire seems inconceivable. In addi-tion, Polaire was 52 years old when Maciste all'inferno was shot. Pauline Polaire was 21 (assuming that she was actually born in 1905).

On a second postcard of Pauline Polaire, also released when Maciste all'inferno came out, the name of the film is shown. If we insist on this point, this is because it creates a benchmark (the year 1926), which confirms that Polaire can never be the actress on these postcards, who was thirty years younger than she.

As we have said, we know very little about Pauline Polaire, and we do not know what led her to choose this name. But what we do not doubt is that she owes to this choice and to the confusion it has created the largest part of what remains of her reputation.

With many thanks to Cynthia Gralla who gave us
the postcard we show on the French and English versions
of this page and who has revised the English translation